


kintsugi

by TigerMoon



Series: family is a four-letter word [8]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Nudity, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-12-01 01:07:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11475405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerMoon/pseuds/TigerMoon
Summary: Ozpin's soul is made of shattered porcelain, bound back together by emotion as soft and fragile as gold, every crack and missing piece on display.Naming the demons is one thing. Showing the marks they've left behind - the scars, the cracks - is much, much harder, because that nameless broken child is now a quiet broken man and Qrow can’t instantly make this all right.





	kintsugi

**Author's Note:**

> _please read the tags they are there for a reason_
> 
>  
> 
> I'm not sorry for any tissues you may need after reading this.

“Are you... certain this is all right, Qrow?”

Water from the shower drips steady from Ozpin’s silver hair, rolling over his pale skin to join the puddle slowly forming at his bare feet on the hardwood floor. His fingers clench a bit more tightly at the bathrobe he’s wearing – deep forest green, his emblem embroidered in gold at the breast – overlapped and pulled tight across his chest, his throat. Just a foot in front of him, Qrow sits on the couch, barechested and in old pajama pants.

The encouraging little smile Qrow let cross his lips drops when Ozpin lifts his head to meet his gaze. The ripple of his jaw, the hollow curve of his cheek, sunken eyes set in determination under strands of damp silver hair – he’s _terrified._ Of Qrow, of himself, of the heavy weight of unsaid words that lay between them, but he hides it so deeply wound within that’s it’s barely visible. _Of course he’s good at hiding it_ , Qrow thinks with a sinking feeling in his gut. _Not like he had a choice in the matter_.

Qrow could stop this. Just one word, and he could put Ozpin out of his misery. But Ozpin was the one who initiated this, who decided to take this step, and he won’t take the decision out of his hands.

Thunder rumbles low and bitter outside as a late-season storm rolls into Vale. Their shadows flicker as the lights in the den grey out: doubled, tripled, gone and back again. Watching. Waiting. Ozpin fidgets under the perceived scrutiny and takes a deep breath; his death grip on the bathrobe tightens a fraction, hiding the faint trembling of his fingers. “I… they….” he begins, then trails off uncertainly.

“I know,” Qrow murmurs after a moment’s consideration. He saw some of them, _that night_ – they don’t ever speak of it as anything but, when everything that could have gone so right went so very wrong instead. When touch and weight and memory had crashed in, a drowning wave, smothering all that had come before. He knows that words won’t be enough for this. There’s catharsis to be had in naming the demons after decades of silence, of course. Ozpin’s pulled the shadows into the light, in fitful stops and starts, never speaking explicitly of his past. He doesn’t have to be explicit for Qrow to know how he’s suffered. Were life fair, were his demons content to live in memory, then it would be fine to just name them. But they’ve left behind brands, indelible marks on mind and soul and body, where they can’t be so easily erased.

Ozpin watches him carefully, brow furrowed in worry. “And I’m sure,” Qrow continues. He lays a hand over Ozpin’s trembling ones for a brief moment, running his calloused fingertips over the other’s damp skin. “Please, Oz. Show me your scars.”

Nodding slowly, trembling lower lip caught firmly between his teeth, Ozpin lets the robe slide off his shoulders. In the part of him still logical, Qrow thinks about how erotic this could have been, him standing there letting the soft fabric fall away from creamy, freckled skin. How teasing it could have been, his holding the discarded robe in front of him to protect his modesty, had his body not been so taut with fear. Had he not been trembling and ashamed.

Ozpin stands before him, bared body and soul, and Qrow’s heart breaks just a little bit more.

He’s seen some of them, of course. The waxy, melted scar that pulls the skin tight on his left arm, from scalding water thrown on him. The parallel gashes across his shins, where a Beringel’s claws broke his Aura. Worse, the lashing crisscrossed whip and cane scars down his back, his buttocks and thighs, cruel marks left from vicious beatings. But these...

There’s a cluster of irregular round burns, puckered and pale, at thefar edge of Ozpin’s collarbone. More of the deep, sunken pits disfigure his skin, scattered sparingly down the broad expanse of his chest to trail down his abdomen and further down still. A few intersect with other marks; there’s a vicious cracked scar that crosses from his back all the way across his ribs on the right, deliberately overlaid with a spattering of smaller, ragged ovals. Qrow reaches out and lays a hand against the taut, trembling muscles of Ozpin’s belly. His fingertips dip into a pair of the scars where they circle below his navel; there are more, trailing further down, into the fine white thatch of hair and beyond, under where he’s holding the robe.

Qrow forces his eyes up before he can process it further. “Cigars?” he asks, though he’s quite sure of the answer.

“Sometimes,” Ozpin replies shortly, and it’s amazing how even his voice is.

Qrow lets the silence weigh over them for a second before asking, his voice gentle: “… your father?”

“… sometimes,” Ozpin whispers, his voice a faint and thready thing in the stillness.

Next to his hand, along his hip, there’s two jagged semicircles – too blunted to be anything other than human teeth, too stretched by growth to have been put on his skin as an adult. Ozpin turns his head away, shuddering, when Qrow ghosts his fingers over them. “I… there are...” He swallows hard, eyes liquid and shimmering. Behind them, the thunder rolls, lightning cracking sharp against the flat black sky. “There are things you learn to do. To survive,” he begins, so soft Qrow can barely hear it.

His hand clenches at his side; those deep hazel eyes close tight in pain. “I used to fight. When he… when it started. I _hated_ – I’d bite. Kick. Scream, _anything_ , but.” Ozpin chokes out a helpless little laugh. Qrow hates it, that horrible little sound so full of despair. “When no one’s listening, what good is it? So one day I just… I went away, inside my head. Somewhere where no one – not them, not my Da’ – could touch me. They could do whatever they wanted to my body, but I… it was like watching a movie, almost. Like it was happening to someone else.” He trails off, expression closed and so withdrawn. _This must_ _be_ _how he looked_ , Qrow thinks, and grits his jaw so he doesn’t vomit. Because Ozpin doesn’t look all there now, like he’s sliding into the eye of the storm where everything’s silent.

“Oz,” Qrow says quietly, and takes hold of his free hand.

Ozpin pulls away just a bit. His breathing has been somewhat rapid this whole time, uneven and strained with the weight of repressed emotion, but now he’s fighting to keep calm. The fear is so thick now Qrow could choke on it; Ozpin _is_ choking on it, struggling for words. “They – they liked it when I was quiet,” he finally says.

His fingers loosen their grip; the robe drops to the floor.

“… Da’ liked it when I cried,” Ozpin whispers.

Qrow doesn’t want to look. He knows what’s coming. He knows why he’s so scared and why he’s so ashamed of his body – part of him suspected, how self-conscious he is of something so natural. He looks anyway because he loves the man before him, scars and all, and he chokes down the sorrow and rage that builds hot and tight in his chest at the sight.

Because there are burn scars there too, half-hidden in a trail of curled white hair, dotting the tender skin between his thighs, left deliberately in that most intimate of places.

Because the silver-haired child who should have been protected so long ago was shattered instead, beaten and sold and fucked by the man he still called Da’, his own godsdamned _father_ , and that nameless broken child is now a quiet broken man and _he can’t make this right_.

In an instant Qrow is up and moving, pulling Ozpin tight to his chest. He trembles in his grasp, breath unsteady, muscles drawn so tight Qrow worries he’ll hurt himself. “They told me I deserved it,” Ozpin half-sobs into the crook of Qrow’s throat. “When I didn’t fight – because I wanted it, you see? I liked it.” The laugh that escapes him is tiny and choked, his naked body shivering cold in the dimness. “Why else would I stop fighting?”

Qrow nuzzles the side of his cheek. “You said it yourself,” he replies, his voice hoarse. “You were _surviving_ , Oz. Doesn’t mean you wanted it. Sure as hell doesn’t mean you deserved it.”

There’s a moment of silence, Ozpin breathing warm and shuddering against his skin. A low rumble of thunder echoes in the room, the sudden heavy patter of raindrops on the window. Qrow traces nonsense patters over the length of his spine. It’s all he can do, really – just hold him and let him bleed the pent-up shame and sorrow out from those ancient wounds. The rage within his chest subsides to his belly and stews, nauseous, as grief takes over. _Grief is hungry_ , Taiyang had told him months ago, and he had been so very right.

But grief is not invincible, he’s learning – little by little, love can starve grief into a slow, slow death.

“There’s… you’ve probably heard of it,” the corvid says thoughtfully, tracing the length of a whip scar as it winds along his hip. “This old Mistrali art – the Mistrali used to believe that there was beauty in the imperfect. That the history of a thing was as important as what it was now. The priests of the old gods, royalty – when their porcelain would break, they wouldn’t hide the breaks or pretend it’d never been broken. They’d mend them with gold instead.”

“Kintsugi,” Ozpin murmurs.

“Yeah.” Qrow leans back, bringing up a hand to cup Ozpin’s jaw. Beyond the flimsy facade of cold marble is a soul made of shattered porcelain, bound back together by emotion as soft and fragile as gold, every crack and missing piece on display. His deep brown eyes dart about, hesitant to look him in the eye; he dips his head and presses a chaste kiss to the burn scars that lay along his collarbone. “The tribe has a lot of fucked-up ideas, but… they call scars kintsugi, because they show you survived. That you were stronger than whatever tried to kill you.”

A tear slides down Ozpin’s cheek; Qrow brushes it away with his thumb, a soft smile on his lips. “I don’t agree with them on… well, most anything, but this – this I think they got right.”

Thunder rolls long and low in the skies; Ozpin wraps his arms low and tight around Qrow’s waist, shivering, and presses his face back into Qrow’s broad shoulder. “I want to believe you,” Ozpin whispers. “Gods, I want to believe.”

“That’s OK,” Qrow murmurs against his skin. “I can believe for the both of us.”

**Author's Note:**

> please leave any death threats, remarks about how much you hate me, etc. in the comments, thanks. if you liked it, please tell me that too!


End file.
